Imagine you launch a business and attempt to register your
product's Internet domain name www.mycoolproduct.com. Only you
find out someone has gotten wind of your creation and registered
the domain first. Adding insult to injury, they want you to buy it
from them--for thousands more than the usual $70 registration
fee.

It happened to Microsoft with such domains as
www.microsoftoffice.com and www.windows.com. And if it can happen
to Microsoft, it can certainly happen to you.

Domain speculators, or "cybersquatters," pay the
required $70 to register domain names similar to those of
well-known or established corporations, and then negotiate a sale
with the company. Prices average between $5,000 and $8,000, though
some have gone into the millions.

Thus far, this has been an uncharted territory--even to U.S.
copyright and trademark law. Network Solutions Inc., an entity with
domain-issuing authority in the United States, can do little to
stop it, says Cheryl Regan, the company's senior communications
manager. "We really have no ability to curb or stem that,
unless they don't pay," Regan says. "Other than that,
it's a free market."

Until now. The organizations that control global distribution
and sale of the Internet's URL naming system are looking to
clamp down on cybersquatters.

Calling squatting an "indefensible activity that should be
suppressed," the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) issued proposed guidelines on protecting domain names from
speculators this April, says Francis Gurry, WIPO's assistant
director general and legal counsel. Among the protections WIPO
proposes:

Â· A
uniform dispute-resolution policy where domain-name applicants
would be required to submit to a dispute-resolution procedure if
requested to do so by a third party. The policy is intended to
resolve any intellectual property dispute arising out of
domain-name registrations in cases of bad faith, and abusive
registration of domain names that violate the rights of protected
trademarks.

Â· In
cases of abuse, disputes would be argued online, and a special
panel appointed by the WIPO would order domains be canceled or
transferred to the winning party.

The proposed solution would end a "[the] wasteful diversion
of resources that pursuing cybersquatting through litigation has
involved," says Gurry, "and would enhance consumer
confidence in the use of the Internet." The guidelines will
come up for a vote at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers' next meeting this month in Santiago, Chile.